Characters

Cars

Organizations

League of Nations.

Part I

The scene opens at a meeting of The League of Countries,
presumably the equivalent of the United Nations, where the countries are
demanding that the kingdom of Kapetapek open its borders to the world. The
country appears to be a mix between a rich Middle Eastern country and a
South American Aztec society. The king refuses to open the borders saying
they don't want strangers in their land. Other countries then accuse him of
conducting secret weapons research, and so on.

Luckily, all the worlds ills can be solved by car races. The King of
Kapetapek and the League of Countries decide that a car race will be
held. If the Kapetapekan driver wins, their borders can remain closed. If
a non-Kapetapekan driver wins, the borders will be open to the world.
The League members are shocked to find that the Kapetapekan driver
is none other than the fearsome Kabala.

Kabala disappeared years ago and has not been seen since. Soon after, our
hero Speed receives a letter inviting
him to take part in the Fire Festival Race in Kapetapek. Speed has a bad
feeling about it and recalls a race where Car #13 -- Kabala's -- caused a
car crash. Another race by the Amazon shows Kabala's car springing over the
river so close above the head of a racer on a raft with his car,
that the racer falls overboard and is eaten by piranhas. Ouch. However,
it is not clear whether these are actual events or Speed's fears.

Soon after, the Go Team arrives in Kapetapek. At the start of the Fire
Festival, the King announces that the winner of the race will marry his
grand-daughter, Sirvana. Sirvana
doesn't seem to happy about this, but Trixie is even less happy -- especially
after the King says he thinks Speed
looks like the bravest man in the race and wants Speed to marry Sirvana.

When people doubt that
Kabala is going to show up for the
race, the King
takes them to his old, spiderweb covered residence. He shows them photos
on the wall of racers. Each photo has a mark of a skull on the corner of
it meaning, the King says, that none of the racers could race again. The
King says after this race, these 2 photos will have the same marks:
pictures of Speed and Racer X.

After the festival Kadar, with his
trademark red lizard on his black crash helmet, and his
other four team members attack
Sirvana to find where the kingdom's
treasures are hidden.
Speed steps in, uses his expert
martial arts, and
quickly dispatches the gang. Sirvana reminds them that this is why her
father wants to keep the borders closed.

The next day, the King has all the racers bring their cars by raft
downstream to the start of the race. On the shore are bones of would-be
treasure hunters who illegally entered Kapetapek. Finally, they arrive
at the shore by a huge rock cliff. With
his remote control ring, the King opens secret doors into the mountain.
The race will take place under a volcano. When the volcano erupts, the
race begins. When it erupts again, the doors to the mountain will seal for
another 100 years. Everyone goes into the mountain to see the ancient
city, which looks like an Aztec city with pyramids and so on, of the
Kapetapek ancestors. While they're there,
Trixie becomes jealous of
Speed talking with
Sirvana. After seeing this and
returning to the
surface, Trixie figures the
Mach Five
has to average 160 mph to make it
through the course before the mountain walls close on the other side
preventing any racer's exit.

The volcano erupts, and the race begins. As he gets further inside the
mountain, Speed becomes trapped between streams of lava.

As Part II begins,
Speed uses the auto jacks of the
Mach Five to spring
over the lava blocking his way. As he drives onward, he sees other
racers have crashed and burned in the lava. He wonders what caused all the
crashes. We viewers, however, have already seen that
Kadar has run them off the course.
Eventually, all the racers stop at a cliff because there is an underground
lake blocking their way. They decide to return to the surface. But just
then, the lake begins draining only to leave a huge four-legged monster
standing there. It is a rock monster and without the support of the water
begins crumbling and falling on the cars. Several get hit, but Speed makes
it across the dry lake bed into a tunnel at the other side. As he
continues, he drives through an underground petrified forest. Further
ahead, Kadar and his team see that the walls of the cave contain diamonds.
They stop and try to pry loose as many as they can. But then a giant
octopus-like monster attacks them. They barely get away, and as Speed
comes upon them, he has to use the Mach Five's rotary saws to cut through the
tentacles trying to grab the car.
Soon after,
Speed comes upon the ruins of an
underground palace filled with
jewels. As
Kadar and company try to loot
everything they can Speed runs up
only to find
Kabala is there. As a fight between
Kadar's team and Speed & Kabala ensues, it turns out that Kabala is
actually
Racer X disguised as Kabala. Racer X
says that Kabala had taught him how to drive tricky mountain courses that
other drivers never mastered. However, one day an avalanche caught Kabala
off guard, and he was killed. To help his friend, Racer X donned his
uniform so that he could protect Kapetapek from the looters of the outside
world. But by this time, Kadar and his team have escaped with the jewels,
but his four teammates get trapped on a cliff edge by a lava stream in front
of them. They try to forge ahead but are washed over the edge in a lava
flow.

Kadar races ahead only to end up in a lava pool himself. He could have
escaped but doesn't want to leave the jewels behind. As he decides how to
save them, a bubble of lava bursts shooting hot lava onto Kadar, and he
perishes.

Elsewhere on the surface,
Spritle and
Chim-Chim have infiltrated a
Kapetapekan religious ceremony. Chim-Chim is soon found out, and tied to a
table under a huge swinging pendulum. After the locals leave him to his
fate - the pendulum swings lower each time - a young boy unties Spritle in
the nick of time.

The volcano has begun to erupt again, and everyone is tense since no
racers have yet emerged. With inches to spare,
Speed and
``Kabala'' emerge,
and the race is a tie. Then
Racer X admits to the disguise
surprising
everyone but especially the King, it seems. In the end, everyone decides a
compromise is in order. Kapetapek decides to open its borders some of the
year and leave them closed the rest of the year.

Of 96 racers startering the Fire Festival Race, only Speed and Racer X
finish. Some backed out early on; some didn't make it out of the mountain.

[Doesn't this remind you
of real politics? When all is said and done, why couldn't they have
simply used common sense at the start??]

As a final note, the Japanese comic book version of this story is
much different. Kadar and friends are killed by a monster rather than lava,
Kabala is shot and killed by Kadar, and it is Speed who takes on Kabala's
identity to finish the race. Unfortunately, I can't read Japanese, so
I'm sure there are many, many details I've missed.